Tag Archives: Commentary

Today’s liberalism is about as liberal as the Hellenistic world was Hellenic — a glossy veneer over a rotten core.

In the old days, liberalism was about the means to an end, not the end itself. Since the days of Socrates, liberalism enshrined free inquiry, guided by inductive thinking and empirical use of data. Its enemies were not necessary organized religion — some of the Church fathers sought to find their salvation through the means of neo-Platonic cosmology and Aristotelian logic — or government or traditional custom and practice, but rather deductive thinking anywhere it was found.

Yet today liberalism itself is deductive. It has descended into a constructed end that requires any means necessary to achieve it. Take any hot-button liberal issue: censorship, abortion, global warming, affirmative action, or illegal immigration. Note the liberal reaction.

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; his focus is classics and military history.

Latest Books by Victor Davis Hanson

2019 European Tour

New Episode of The Classicist

One Hundred years after the Treaty of Versailles ended World War I, Victor Davis Hanson argues that the effects of the agreement are widely misunderstood. In this episode, we look at Versailles in the context of the wider war (and the wartime diplomacy of the era), examine the American role in World War I, parse the claim that the First World War was little more than a tragic mistake, and scrutinize claims that modern geopolitical tensions have parallels to those of 1914.

New Episode of The Classicist

On the 80th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Victor Davis Hanson reflects on how the short-lived German-Soviet treaty shaped the course of World War II — and what it revealed about the leadership styles of both Hitler and Stalin.

New Encounter Books Interview

New Episode of Whiskey Politics

Victor Davis Hanson discusses the damaging disclosure about Obama keeping tabs on the FBI Hillary Clinton email investigation, State Department unmasking, why Hillary’s and Obama’s hubris may be their own downfall and how this can very well be a Watergate or Iran-Contra type scandal.